Here are admission rates for select public high schools in California for Berkeley. These were primarily based on schools that had a significantly high number of applicants (in most cases, usually over 100).
UC-Berkeley Applied Admit Percentage
Southern California
University-Fresno 38 17 44.74%
Valencia 78 25 32.05%
San Marcos (Santa Barbara) 73 23 31.51%
Clovis North 69 21 30.43%
Dos Pueblos 96 26 27.08%
West Ranch 100 27 27.00%
Palos Verdes 131 35 26.72%
Westview 136 36 26.47%
Calabasas 118 30 25.42%
La Canada 119 30 25.21%
Canyon Crest 255 63 24.71%
Palos Verdes Peninsula 247 61 24.70%
Crescenta Valley 145 35 24.14%
San Dieguito 117 28 23.93%
La Jolla 135 31 22.96%
Whitney 92 21 22.83%
Oxford 93 21 22.58%
Westlake 120 27 22.50%
Northwood 232 49 21.12%
Mira Costa 215 45 20.93%
Troy 260 53 20.38%
Orange County Arts 119 24 20.17%
South Pasadena 124 25 20.16%
Torrey Pines 174 35 20.11%
Walnut 189 38 20.11%
Granada Hills 237 47 19.83%
Campolindo 106 21 19.81%
Los Osos 118 23 19.49%
Palisades Charter 192 37 19.27%
Corona Del Mar 118 22 18.64%
California Academy Math 104 19 18.27%
Beckman 219 40 18.26%
Santa Monica 209 37 17.70%
Arcadia 276 48 17.39%
Diamond Bar 295 51 17.29%
Del Norte 146 23 15.75%
Long Beach Poly 145 22 15.17%
Northern California
McClatchy 86 25 29.07%
Vista Del Lago 63 18 28.57%
Mission Senior (SF) 88 24 27.27%
El Cerrito 79 21 26.58%
Carmel 42 11 26.19%
Berkeley 252 65 25.79%
Lynbrook 281 67 23.84%
Saratoga 168 38 22.62%
Irvington 257 57 22.18%
Granite Bay 118 26 22.03%
Oakland Tech 141 30 21.28%
Carlmont 200 42 21.00%
Menlo-Atherton 143 30 20.98%
Miramonte 130 26 20.00%
Campolindo 106 21 19.81%
Aragon 112 22 19.64%
Monte Vista (Danville) 154 30 19.48%
Amador Valley 209 40 19.14%
Dougherty Valley 398 73 18.34%
Mission San Jose 344 63 18.31%
Davis 164 30 18.29%
Mills 98 17 17.35%
Mountain View 133 23 17.29%
Cupertino 252 42 16.67%
Los Gatos 121 20 16.53%
Leland 212 34 16.04%
Logan 175 28 16.00%
Redwood 119 19 15.97%
Gunn 245 38 15.51%
Los Altos 183 28 15.30%
Monta Vista 377 57 15.12%
Palo Alto 201 27 13.43%
Lowell 429 53 12.35%
The funny thing is that one of the famous Silicon Valley pressure cookers had the 3rd lowest acceptance rate for Cal among the Northern California schools.
My kid’s Silicon Valley pressure cooker ranked pretty high in the acceptance rates, but generally they don’t have more than 20 kids attend Cal.
Among those SF schools, Lowell does have far more applicants to UCB than Mission does. It does look like around 60% of Lowell seniors applied to UCB, while about 35% of Mission seniors did.
“Hmmmm, why do some “good”(Palo Alto, Cupertino, etc) schools have lower accept rates than more average schools??”
Partly because those “more average” schools have greater self-selection (lower ranking students not applying to top or even any four year colleges). Take two adjacent schools: Menlo-Atherton and Palo Alto. M-A has 600 students per year, 60% go to four year colleges, 25% apply to UCB, 5% get in. Paly has 500 students per year, 80% go to four year colleges, 40% apply to UCB, just over 5% get in.
But another factor is probably that kids in a really rich city like Palo Alto can afford private schools and so not as many attend UCs (and perhaps a few top kids don’t even apply). It surprised me that only 12% attend UCs (https://paly.net/sites/default/files/pdf-faqs/attachments/profile_2018-19grading_key.pdf) and over 30% go to out of state private schools (at my kid’s less well off school more went to UCs than out of state privates). It’s likely a self-reinforcing situation: if many of your accepted students turn down a college, they won’t keep admitting you in the same numbers. And as @ucbalumnus notes, UCB likes to admit lower SES kids, who are scarce in Palo Alto.
There was a thread a while ago about CA parents in places like Palo Alto complaining that their kids can’t get into top UCs. I suppose these stats show why they are complaining.
Following up on @Twoin18, I think the fear of NOT getting into UCB or UCLA has made many more upper-middle class parents (the ones who can afford to buy the houses in these “good” public school districts) bite the bullet and let their kids ED at selective private college. Then, if the kid gets in to a private college with even a little bit of merit or need-based aid, they don’t bother applying to the UCs, so that impacts those numbers. It’s a vicious circle of fear. I’m seeing this a lot among families I know who might have preferred UCB or UCLA for location and cost, but fear the risk of only applying RD everywhere.
@ccprofandmomof2 Based on my observation of the college admission process last year, when my older daughter was applying, there seems to be an advantage to applying ED at the most selective schools. These schools care very much about yield (percent of admitted who end up enrolling). There are some students who they will admit ED who they will only waitlist in the regular cycle.
For those lucky enough to get a chance to move off the waitlist (rare), they will call and ask if their college is still the number one choice (no merit aid by that point), And only if the student says, “yes”, will they extend an admission.
In any case, I would guess that counselors at schools like Palo Alto have made the same observation and are advising the kids to apply ED to the top schools.
Per admission to UCs, I think that because UCB and UCLA also care about yield, to a degree, and because they want diversity and cannot use race, etc., in their admissions, my guess is that they achieve some of the two goals by effectively capping the number of admitted students for each high school based on past yield numbers and possibly (as @Twoin18 said) average socioeconomic status (SES) of the high school population (again, this is just a guess, but, it just makes sense). I would also guess that their yield numbers are better for the lower SES schools so one can get away with just using past yields and get lower SES without even using school’s SES in the process.
Another thought is that students admitted ED after submitting their UC applications in November would then have to withdraw the UC application and would not be admitted to UCB even though they are listed as having applied. If 30% of kids are going to OOS privates (so potentially 10%+ through ED, including many of the top students who would otherwise be admitted to the UCs) then that’s likely to be a big distortion.
@Twoin18 I don’t think the application withdrawal scenario that you described is the case since I’m pretty sure the applied number would include those, withdraw or not. The applied numbers at the rich high schools for UCB are all pretty low to begin with. As mentioned above probably only 25% apply to begin with. ED decisions would not be known before they would apply to the UCs.
The application percentage at Paly is actually higher (40%) than schools that rank above them in the table like M-A (25%). But the table is of acceptance rate (acceptances divided by applications), and this would be lowered if the Paly students withdrew their applications after getting in ED elsewhere.
Individual applicant (lower) SES is a likely correlate to the applicant overcoming barriers, limitations, or challenges to achieve what s/he did, something that UC admissions readers are known to look favorably on. Note that two of the eight essay questions (which applicants choose four of) relate to this type of thing: http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/how-to-apply/personal-questions/freshman/index.html
It is pretty likely that UC has enough historical yield data that they probably try to make an individual yield estimate for each admitted student (e.g. admits like this student had a 23% matriculation rate in the past, so count him/her as 0.23 student added to the class on this campus/division/major).
Note that this is more or less a random list of California public high schools, primarily listing those high schools that either had a lot of applicants to UCB (say more than 100), and/or had a high admit rate. Not all inclusive, I skipped a lot of them.